In production processes and systems thereof, typically a starting material is firstly supplied to a manufacturing machine. A designer of the product designs the product via a computer system, using an application such as a computer-aided design (CAD) or computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) program. These programs offer a number of tools to design the product. After completion of the design of the product, a computer file is produced containing instructions for the manufacturing machine to execute. The manufacturing machine subsequently processes the instructions to create the desired product.
However, there are a number of shortcomings in this conventional process. Firstly, in these systems the starting material is restricted to specific default start pieces. The production process is under the assumption that the starting piece is one of these default pieces of fixed dimensions and the instructions control the manufacturing machine under these assumptions. If the operator decides to start with an unconventional starting work piece or with a piece whose manufacturing is only partly done, they must manually evoke changes to the manufacturing instructions. Generally, it is simply up to the operator to ensure that all manufacturing steps comply with the work piece and thus there is a large margin for error. Also, it typically requires the presence of a suitably trained operator or engineer to ensure correctness of the manufacturing process.
In this procedure, it is also necessary to complete all of the necessary steps from start to finish in one pass. A starting set work piece is simply an unprocessed block of material for which each feature of the product is crafted at the time of manufacturing. This restriction is quite limiting to how products can be manufactured, specifically where the spectrum of manufactured products is large and diverse.
Additionally, for a new user who is producing a product for the first time, it is a daunting task to determine and apply a subsequent appropriate manufacturing step for a given situation/work piece configuration. Therefore, it is required that users have a basic knowledge of how to operate the manufacturing process before they are able to effectively manufacture a product. This is a barrier that prevents many people from being able to quickly get involved in the production process of products. Conventionally, the suppliers or creators of the manufacturing systems would provide training and/or a help service to clients using the system. However, as with most processes involving the consultation of a specialist, this is an expensive and time-consuming solution.
Another problem with existing manufacturing systems is the restrictions they impose on the user. If a user desires to implement a feature not available by the manufacturing system, the user must work around the shortcomings using available manufacturing steps to patch together different features that would result in a similar outcome. This is a direct result of the typical way known controlled manufacturing systems may not allow a user to exceed pre-defined boundaries of their system.
Furthermore, the manufacturing machine simply follows the instructions generated during the design process, and there are no reliable means for checking whether the work piece is correct or not after every manufacturing step. If the operators would like to ensure that the work piece is as designed at every step of the manufacturing process, the operators must manually check themselves.